


i like to think the symmetry will keep me close to you

by mikripetra



Series: sight of the sun [5]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: (not explained in depth in this installment in the longer series), Alternate Universe - College/University, Anxiety, Asexual John Laurens, Gay John Laurens, Henry Laurens' A+ Parenting, Internalized Homophobia, Light Angst, M/M, Miscommunication, Misunderstandings, Moving On, Past Abuse, Past Child Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Relationship, Self-Hatred, Slow Burn, Trans Alexander Hamilton, Trans Male Character, Transphobia, it gets fixed in the next work in this series I promise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-16
Updated: 2020-10-16
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:13:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27036997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mikripetra/pseuds/mikripetra
Summary: When Alex sees that John is drawing him in his sketchbook, he's ecstatic. This must mean that John likes him back. Right?-Or, the one where John gets a boyfriend, and it's not Alexander.
Relationships: Alexander Hamilton/John Laurens
Series: sight of the sun [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1194555
Comments: 16
Kudos: 38





	i like to think the symmetry will keep me close to you

**Author's Note:**

> Yes I am ALIVE! I know I haven't posted on this series in over a year, and I deeply apologize. But I knew it would be better to wait for inspiration to strike than to publish something sub-par. This story fits nicely in the middle of the series, directly before "for once, there is nothing up my sleeve." 
> 
> This story takes place in early spring, during the second semester of Alex and John's sophomore year in college.
> 
> I had planted the seed of John having a boyfriend before Alex in "just some scars from a life that used to trouble me," and I had always intended on fleshing it out. Here is the beginning of that story.

Alex threw himself into the chair next to John, blearily rubbing at his eyes. The library was packed to the gills at this hour. It felt more like the subway than anything else- sitting with his bag between his knees, one arm pressed up against John’s and the other propped up on the corner of the table.

 _Well,_ he thought, feeling the softness of John’s sweater brush up against his arm, _there are worse things._

He sat up a little straighter, squared his shoulders, and kept reading.

_“Government by kings was first introduced into the world by the Heathens, from whom the children of Israel copied the custom. It was the most prosperous invention the Devil ever set on foot for the promotion of idolatry. The Heathens paid divine honors to their deceased kings, and the Christian world hath improved on the plan by doing the same to their living ones. How impious is the title of sacred majesty applied to a worm, who in the midst of his splendor is crumbling into dust!”_

“Fucking ‘hath,’” Alex muttered. “Who even _says_ that? Is he just trying to be über fancy or what?”

He flipped open his notebook, pen poised and ready to write:

_“Esta idiota thinks he needs to use 10 th century language to get across an extremely easy to understand point (mientras que al mismo tiempo siendo racista y llamando bárbaros a los extranjeros, por supuesto)”_

Alex unfolded the notebook to its full width so he could turn the page when he got smacked in the arm by John.

“Watch it!” John exclaimed, arms curved protectively over his sketchbook.

Alex raised his hands in surrender. “Sorry, sorry!”

He went to shuffle his notebook away from John’s work, ass balanced precariously on the ending corner of the bench, when he caught sight of John’s drawing.

The page was filled with pencil sketches of extreme closeups. A head of thick, longish hair from the side, covering the face of the person just enough that Alex couldn’t make out who it was. Lips quirked up in a grin. Slender, yet unmistakably masculine shoulders under a t-shirt. And hands. Everywhere was hands. Hands holding a pen and writing on a page, poised over a keyboard, spanned wide and curved bent in a way that somehow expressed how much the person would use their hands to convey what they were trying to say.

Alex gently nudged John, shoulder to shoulder. “You doing a life study in class or something?”

John hummed noncommittally, eyes never leaving the page.

“John,” Alex whined. “ _John.”_

He poked John dead center on the cheek. John swatted his hand away with considerable force, but he was smiling.

“Huh?” John shook his head as he refocused. “Sorry, what’d you say?”

Alex shrugged. “Just wanted to know what you were drawing.”

And then, something fascinating happened. John’s eyes grew wide as saucers. His mouth twitched, like he was trying to smile but got stuck along the way. His hands reached out and slammed his sketchbook shut, shoving it deep into his bag in one quick move.

“Nothing!” he squeaked.

Alex’s eyebrows shot up. “Okay, now you _have_ to tell me.”

John pulled out his earbuds, fastidiously avoiding eye contact.

“No I don’t!” John said, his voice taking on a strange sing-song quality. “I have to listen to a podcast on representation in the media, and _you_ have to finish doing that outline for PoliSci!”

Alex pouted dramatically. “Oh, come on! You know it’s going to be all I can think about now.”

“I can’t hear you!” John responded, clearly able to hear him.

Alex rolled his eyes, huffed a bit, but went back to his work.

_“As the exalting one man so greatly above the rest cannot be justified on the equal rights of nature, so neither can it be defended on the authority of scripture; for the will of the Almighty, as declared by Gideon and the prophet Samuel, expressly disapproves of government by kings…”_

Why had John been so desperate to hide his drawings from Alex? It wasn’t like they were nudes or anything- just tasteful sketches of well-proportioned, G-rated body parts. Why would he be so embarrassed?

_“All anti-monarchical parts of scripture have been very smoothly glossed over in monarchical governments, but they undoubtedly merit the attention of countries which have their governments yet to form…”_

They weren’t crappy drawings either. They were really well-done, especially the ones of the hands. Alex could tell John had put the majority of his time and effort into giving those hands not just form, but _emotion._ Whoever those hands belonged to, John certainly cared an awful lot about them and what they had to say.

 _“’_ _Render unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar’s’ is the scripture doctrine of courts, yet it is no support of monarchical government, for the Jews at that time were without a king, and in a state of vassalage to the Romans…”_

Alex couldn’t help but take a moment to giggle quietly at that. _Vassalage._

As his eyes skimmed down the rest of the page, his mind kept wandering back to John’s drawings. God, he couldn’t stop thinking about those hands. Alex couldn’t draw hands to save his life. Hell, he couldn’t draw _period_ to save his life.

Actually, that wasn’t quite true. Alex had always been able to draw one thing, but he wouldn’t admit it if there was a gun held to his head. Only Lafayette knew how good Alex was at drawing [unicorns](https://john-laurens.tumblr.com/post/143970555598/wait-what-is-hamiltons-infamous-powder-horn), and they had promised not to tell a soul.

But hands? God, no. Even as a kid, whenever Alex had never graduated beyond stick figures with circles for hands whenever he tried to draw humanoids.

John’s drawings of hands had been so lifelike. They bent and twisted just like real ones did, and they were so detailed, right down to the beauty marks on the fourth knuckle of the left hand-

Alex froze. Looked down at his hands. And forgot how to breathe.

* * *

As they walked down the block to get lunch, John kept glancing at him.

Eventually, Alex cracked. “Have I got something on my face?”

“You’re acting weird.”

“What?” Alex squeaked. “Why would you say that?”

John’s eyes narrowed even further. “When’s the last time you slept, Alex?”

Alex had actually slept quite a bit the night before. But presented with a convincing excuse, he pounced on it.

“Maybe thirty hours ago?”

John made a show of looking stern, but the corners of his lips twitched up in fond amusement. He snatched Alex’s coffee out of his hands, ignoring his indignant cry, and tossed it into the nearest garbage.

“I’m not stupid enough to take you to bed right now,” John remarked, “but could you promise to get at least five hours tonight?”

Alex felt goosebumps form up and down his arms, ridiculously, at John’s phrasing.

“Sure,” he choked out.

John frowned, confused at the lack of a sarcastic response.

“Okay,” John drew out slowly. “Great, then, I guess.”

* * *

“You ever gonna show me what you’re working on?” Alex asked desperately.

“Sure, yeah,” John murmured, flipping open his sketchbook.

Alex forced himself to stay still, practically vibrating in anticipation.

Alex couldn’t stop the grin spreading across his face as he watched John flip through the pages, eventually settling on one and turning it toward Alex to show him-

A turtle.

“The trick with softshells is finding a way to make them look less like a glob of slime but not too fully formed that you can’t identify them for what they are. They’re like, uh, kind of, panqueques a medio cocer, I guess.”

Alex smiled thinly. “That’s great, John. They’re looking less and less like blobfish every day.”

John smacked him gently with the sketchbook.

“Hey, fuck off!” he cried, but he was laughing through it.

* * *

“What about those human life studies?”

John froze, his back turned to Alex as he stood from putting his bag away in his dorm room.

“What do you mean?” he asked, voice artificially calm and measured.

“Uh, you know,” Alex continued, like an idiot, hands shoved in his jeans pockets, “the ones you were doing in the library?”

John was silent.

“Thought I might’ve seen some familiar hands, there?” Alex hinted desperately, voice strained.

John’s shoulders tensed, rising up around his ears. He still hadn’t turned around.

“I think you should head out, Alexander. I have some studying to do.”

Alex’s face fell. This wasn’t what he wanted at all.

Oh, God. He knew what was happening here.

John had been slowly getting more comfortable talking about his, uh, _lack of heterosexuality_ after his violent coming out to Alex a few months prior. But it was extremely slow going. He still shut down whenever Alex or Lafayette would gently initiate something with him, like _wasn’t that barista cute_ or _got any guys on your radar, John?_

It was honestly the only topic of conversation that made John shut down, anymore. When they first met, there was no telling what might trigger John into getting lost inside his own head.

“Hey, no,” Alex started, softly. “I didn’t mean it like that. It’s fine. Everything’s fine.”

John’s hands slammed down onto the dresser in front of him, making Alex jump. He seemed to come back to himself after a second, jolting his arms back to his side and sitting down on his bed so Alex could see his face, hands tucked under his thighs, shoulder’s curved inwards, nonthreatening.

“Sorry,” John croaked.

Alex laughed nervously. “Everything’s fine, dude. You didn’t scare me with that. And I just thought it was cool that you were sketching _me_ of all things. I mean, I’ve never seen you do any drawings of real people. It’s not…it’s not a gay thing, you know? What, you think if you sketch out the face of una abuela on the subway, everyone’s going to think you want to get down on your knees and confess your undying love for her?”

Alex got down on one knee, fluttered his eyelashes, and started waving his arms around like a cheesy Shakespearean actor. “¡Por favor, abuela, acepta mi amor eterno por tu rostro arrugado que parece un trozo de cuero de la época de los cavernícolas!”

That got a small chuckle out of John. Alex beamed.

Alex staggered to his feet, awkwardly brushing dust from the carpet off the knee of his pants.

He shrugged as nonchalantly as he could, feeling John’s eyes on him. “Just thought your drawings looked cool, man. That’s all.”

John grinned wider, but still shyly.

“Thanks Alex. I really appreciate it.”

Alex nodded decisively.

“But I do actually have some work to do on my own.”

Alex’s smile slowly dripped off his face. “Oh right. Okay. Well. See you later?”

John was already looking away. “Bye, man.”

* * *

It had been two weeks. John was avoiding him.

They only had one class together, so it made sense that they wouldn’t see each other that often, Alex supposed. But he and John had fallen into a routine of going about the most mundane aspects of their days together. Alex would never grab Chipotle without bringing John along, and John would never get a cup of coffee in the morning without buying one for Alex, too. It wasn’t an intrusive thing; Alex never had to _drag_ John to come along with him when he went places. John would just be there, falling into step with Alex, close enough to reach out for but too far away to touch.

Had Alex been coming on too strong? He knew he could be overwhelming at times, but John had never seemed bothered by it.

Unbidden, a memory from his early childhood was spat out by the churning void of his thoughts.

_Uh, you’re a nice girl and all, Catherine, but you’re really annoying, so we can’t be friends anymore. Okay?_

Alex rubbed at his eye. That wasn’t even a particularly important memory. The phrasing sounded ridiculously cliché, in retrospect. It was completely ridiculous. It didn’t mean anything.

(It had made him cry himself to sleep, at the time.)

Why did his brain have to regurgitate memories constantly? It was like there was a gremlin living inside his mind, ready to press the trigger on all the bad shit he had ever experienced at the slightest provocation.

He was always complimented on his memory in school. It was true; he had nearly photographic recall going back to his very early childhood. But it had always been much more of a curse than a blessing. PTSD becomes a hell of a lot more serious when you can remember exactly what clothes you were wearing, exactly where you were standing, exactly how tall you were the first time you realized there was something wrong with you.

But outside his class on advanced political theory, he caught sight of a golden opportunity.

“Hey!” Alex called out, nearly tripping over his own feet in his haste to catch up. “A-a-ron! Wait up.”

Aaron stopped walking, so he clearly had heard him. Aaron visibly took a deep breath, straightened his back, and then turned around, a smile plastered onto his face.

“Hello, Alexander,” Aaron began. “Did you need something?”  
  
“Aww,” Alex pouted exaggeratedly. “I can’t want to catch up with my favorite A-a-ron in the whole world without having an ulterior motive?”

It fell flat. Aaron’s smile began considerably more fixed. “What do you need, Alexander?”

“Okay, so, maybe I’ve got an ulterior motive,” Alex admitted. “You’re John’s roommate, right? Have you seen him lately? Is he doing alright?”

Aaron looked confused.

“Yes,” Aaron started, slowly. “He’s been great, actually. He’s out of our room all the time, and he seems perfectly happy when he gets back. I assumed he was going to see you.”

“Oh.”

For the first time since Alex had met him, Aaron looked concerned.

“Alexander, is everything alright? I can talk to John if you need me to-”

“No, it’s fine!” Alex exclaimed, forcing a grin. “All fine. Thanks, Burr.”

He rushed off, refusing to turn around when Aaron called his name.

* * *

It was another four days before he saw John.

John stormed into Alex’s dorm with no warning one day and shut the door behind him, his cheeks pink, his teeth digging into his lip, and his eyes focused on some point in the distance. He was grinning so widely it looked painful.

“What’s got you all happy?” Alex asked, unable to stop himself from grinning, too.

John’s eyes locked onto Alex, and for a split second, he looked crestfallen. But it was gone in an instant, his grin back after faltering for a moment, even if the light in his eyes didn’t look as bright as before.

“I’m going on a date,” John breathed. “With a _guy._ ”

Alex froze, fountain pen still on the page of his notebook, dripping ink through the pages.

A sharp pain, raw and deep, spread across his breastbone.

John’s smile had dropped completely. His head was cocked to the side as he looked at Alex, his eyes filled with warm concern.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” John asked, throwing his messenger bag to the floor and clambering over to where Alex was sitting. “You alright?”

“Yeah,” Alex choked out, desperately trying not to breathe in the scent of John hovering so close to him, his hand poised in midair as if it were about to hold his cheek in comfort. “Sorry. That’s really great news, John.”

For a second, John looked confused. _What news?_ he seemed ready to ask.

But then his eyebrows shot up in recognition.

“Oh, yeah!” he exclaimed, that grin twitching back up his face in fits and starts. “I mean, I don’t know if it means anything, really, he’s just some guy in my life studies class. We’ve only hung out a few times before…”

Alex nodded vaguely as John continued to talk, his mind running a mile a minute. Had he seen this guy before? When had John gone off to hang out with him? God, Alex would bet anything he was that smug son of a bitch Alex’d seen hanging around the café a few blocks from campus, fucking _elbow patches_ on his arms and fingerless gloves and a scarf he wore purely for the fashion because he’d never had to worry about keeping warm-

Alex blinked himself back to awareness as he realized John had trailed off, his grin turned lopsided into an uncertain frown.

“Sorry,” John muttered, his arm moving to scratch at the back of his neck in the way he only did when he was feeling self-conscious. “I know you probably don’t want to hear about any of this. I’m sorry for bothering you, seriously. I’ll leave you to finish up your work.”

_Get the hell out of here, Catherine. Can’t you see I’m busy? We both know you’ll forget about what you were going to say in the next five minutes. It’s not like you ever say anything important._

“You’re not upsetting me at all. I want to hear about it,” Alex lied, his heart slowly shattering into ground-up dust as he spoke, making sure to plaster a false, wide smile on his face. “Really. Give me all the details, man! Where’s he from? What’s he look like?”

Alex had been such a fool.

John really wasn’t interested in Alex at all. Alex had been reading too much into every little thing for no reason. So what John drew his hands in his sketchbook? For all Alex knew, John had filled countless pages with drawings of all his friends.

John hadn’t acted uncomfortable when confronted about the drawings because he had a crush on Alexander.

The realization flooded through Alex’s body like a bucket of ice water dumped on his head. Had John picked up on _Alex’s_ feelings for _him_? Was that why he had acted so strangely? He had felt uncomfortable?

As Alex listened to John talk about his date (his _boyfriend_ , some douchebag who _wasn’t Alexander and never would be_ ), he made a promise to himself. He would never make John feel uncomfortable again. Their friendship meant far too much to Alex for him to let something as silly as some misplaced feelings get in the way. And he wouldn’t point out invisible flaws in John’s boyfriend just to break them up. He’d be civil- he’d be _nice._ John deserved to be happy. And Alex would do whatever was necessary to make that happen.

 _Of course John doesn’t like you back,_ that snide voice in Alexander’s head whispered. _He likes_ boys, _doesn’t he?_

Alex shoved that thought down as deep as it would go. It didn’t matter, even if it was true. John would never love him like that.

**Author's Note:**

> TRANSLATION:
> 
> ¡Por favor, abuela, acepta mi amor eterno por tu rostro arrugado que parece un trozo de cuero de la época de los cavernícolas!: Please, grandma, accept my undying love for your wrinkled face that looks like a piece of leather from the time of cavemen!
> 
> Both John and Alex, without talking to each other: I need to hide my feelings in the most complicated way possible so I don't ruin our friendship!
> 
> Thanks so much for reading! If you know this series, welcome back! If you're new, make sure to check out the other works in this series: this is part of a much longer story. 
> 
> Please comment if you'd like to! It will make my day.


End file.
